The dark sky abo­ve Spits­ber­gen was lit by a pret­ty spec­ta­cu­lar light for s short moment on Decem­ber 21, a sight that didn’t requi­re addi­tio­nal alco­hol or drugs to make one think of an UFO or some­thing like that. Andre­as Eriks­son who works for KSAT, the com­pa­ny run­ning the satel­li­te anten­n­tas on Pla­tå­berg behind the air­port, mana­ged to take seve­ral pho­tos that sub­se­quent­ly appeared on KSAT’s social media pages. Addi­tio­nal­ly, an auto­ma­tic came­ra of the Kjell Hen­rik­sen Obser­va­to­ri­ums in Advent­da­len took an impres­si­ve video (click here to access the video on the web­site of the obser­va­to­ri­ums; the gist of the mat­ter comes after ca. 15 seconds).

Light phe­no­me­non on the sky abo­ve Spits­ber­gen. Pho­to taken by Andre­as Eriksson/KSAT.

The pho­tos cau­sed much spe­cu­la­ti­on what it actual­ly might have been. Among­st others it was sug­gested that it was San­ta Claus try­ing out a new sledge. If so, it must have been a bit of a hot rod.

Mean­while, infor­ma­ti­on has sur­faced that reve­als the real natu­re of the light. The true expl­ana­ti­on, as descri­bed by the Barents Obser­ver is a Rus­si­an mili­ta­ry rocket with “mili­ta­ry infra­struc­tu­re”. It is not known what this “infra­struc­tu­re” actual­ly is.

From Rus­sia with love.

It is not a good start into the news year 2024.

The news came from Alas­ka: the Avi­an influ­en­za virus is shown to be the cau­se of death of a polar bear for the first time, as the local news­pa­per Alas­ka Bea­con wri­tes.

Poten­ti­al­ly lethal also for him: polar bear in Spits­ber­gen.

Spe­cia­lists of the Divi­si­on of Envi­ron­men­tal Health – Sta­te Vete­ri­na­ri­an say that this did not come as a sur­pri­se, as avi­an flu has kil­led num­e­rous mammals of various spe­ci­es befo­re, inclu­ding various seals, red fox, brown bears, black bears and grizz­ly bears.

In con­trast to ear­lier out­breaks of the Avi­an flu such as in 2014-15, the cur­rent out­break seems to be long-lived and the virus seems capa­ble of long-term sur­vi­val in wild­life popu­la­ti­ons inclu­ding mammals. The cur­rent virus has alre­a­dy had seve­re impacts on sea­bird popu­la­ti­ons in north Nor­way, whe­re main­ly kit­ti­wa­kes were affec­ted, as well as a lar­ge kit­ti­wa­ke colo­ny on the island of Hopen which is part of the Nor­we­gi­an Sval­bard archi­pe­la­go. The virus is also found in the Sou­thern Oce­an, inclu­ding the Falk­land Islands and South Geor­gia; in South Ame­ri­ca, it kil­led lar­ge num­bers of wild ani­mals inclu­ding not only sea­birds but also sea lions, main­ly in Chi­le and Peru, as repor­ted e.g. by the WOAH (World Orga­niza­ti­on for Ani­mal Health).

The health risk for humans is descri­bed as “very low”, but the Avi­an influ­en­za virus has to be con­side­red a long-lived thre­at for wild­life popu­la­ti­ons that are alre­a­dy under pres­su­re from cli­ma­te chan­ge and, in many cases, other thre­ats.